In a circular knitting machine, when knitting needles are inserted into a needle bed in a state where no knitting needles are installed in needle bed (such as the case of replacing the needle bed), the knitting needles of different butt shapes have to be inserted in regular order.
Hitherto, the work has been done manually by an experienced person. For example, in case of inserting needles of the total number of 3,000 or the like which are classified into four kinds (for example, A, B, C, and D) according to the shapes of the butts or the like, the first needles A are inserted into grooves for knitting needles for the whole circumference intermittently at the ratio of one knitting needle to four shuttle grooves. Second needles B, third needles C, and fourth needles D are inserted in a manner similar to the first needles A to thereby insert all of the 3,000 needles.
Usually, grooves for holing few tens of knitting needles per inch are formed in the shuttle of the circular knitting machine. The number of grooves per inch is often about 14 to 36. At the time of the above-mentioned work, therefore, the knitting needles have to be inserted into the grooves formed with a very small pitch at predetermined intervals in order of the knitting needles. Even for the experienced person, the work is very laborious and, moreover, inefficient.